Saturday, March 14, 2015

Wolves and Dogs... Why Your Pet is Not a Domesticated Predator

Evolution, domestication, and selective breeding have made dogs biddable pets. Image by jade

It’s a fact that dogs (Canis familiaris) and grey wolves (C. lupus)
are closely related – in fact, there is some debate about whether they
should even be considered separate species, which is why it is not
uncommon to see dogs referred to as Canis lupus familiaris, a subspecies of the grey wolf.

Barry Eaton, in the book Dominance in Dogs: Fact or Fiction points out that C. lupus and C. familiaris
have virtually identical DNA, the same number of chromosomes and teeth,
and are able to interbreed and produce viable hybrid offspring, yet
domestication and selective breeding have led to the two becoming very
different animals.

Genetic Factors

Dmitry Belyaev’s silver fox experiment, which has seen selective breeding of Vulpes vulpes
for both aggressive and tameness traits, has led strength to the theory
that the domestication process leads to tangible genetic differences,
both in terms of temperament and appearance.

As, generation by generation, the foxes became tamer and more
trusting of humans, morphological and physical changes also occurred, as
discussed by Svetlana Gogoleva et al. in a 2009 study. These
included changes in vocalisations, and the development of dog-like
floppy ears and piebald colourings, similar to those of border collies.

This provides an insight into how similar genetic differences between
dogs and wolves could have evolved and influenced their ability to
interact with humans. What’s more, these changes in the foxes have taken
place in a staggeringly short space of time – only 50 years.

Imagine the range of changes that could occur in the 15-20,000 years
since dogs first began to become domesticated and distinguished from
their wild wolf ancestors.

Dogs have evolved to be highly trainable and easily socialised. Image by SusanUtley

Trainability and Socialisation

Raymond and Lorna Coppinger’s Dogs: A New Understanding of Canine Origin, Behaviours, and Evolution
documents the vast differences between dogs and wolves when it comes to
the ease in which we can train and socialise them to humans.

Trainers at Wolf Park are able to elicit basic behaviours from
resident wolves (for example, tolerating being walked on a leash), but
even tame wolves seem unable to learn the basic commands such as ‘sit’
which are commonly taught to pet dogs.

Furthermore, the socialisation periods of C. familiaris pups has evolved to be far more accommodating of potential relationships with humans than that of their C. lupus ancestors.
Dogs can easily become socialised (and with any other species, not
just humans) until around 12-16 weeks of age, whereas there is little
hope of a human-wolf relationship unless the pup is removed from the den
before 2-3 weeks of age and painstakingly hand-reared.

Hunting and Predatory Behaviour

Another key difference between dogs and wolves is that, despite what
many modern-day dog owners still unassumingly believe, dogs are not
hunters or predators.

Wolves, living wild, seeking and catching their own food are natural predators and possess what we may term a ‘killer instinct.’

The very thing that caused certain groups wolves to evolve into
domesticated early dogs in the first place, however, is their feeding
from human leftovers, following human settlers and raiding the dumps
they left behind, evolving into increasingly tame animals who were able
to tolerate humans at close proximity.

As Alexandra Semyonova explains in The 100 Silliest Things People Say About Dogs,
this eliminated the need for dogs to hunt, and they have lost that
ability over the years. As evidenced by John Paul Scott and John L.
Fuller in Genetics and the Social Behaviour of the Dog, even
the largest breeds of dogs have smaller jaws and fewer rows of teeth
than wolves, and have lost the drive to hunt and kill prey.

Myths of Pack Mentality

Studies of captive wolves have given a false impression of wild-living wolf hierarchies. Image by Frances_Marie

It is unfortunate that many of the everyday dog owner’s
understandings of wolf behaviour stem from early research studies
involving captive wolves. As Jean Donaldson explains, attempting to
study wolf families in captivity is equivalent to making assumptions
about human behaviour based on observing the inhabitants of a refugee
camp: We cannot expect the behaviour we observe to be representative of
that exhibited in a ‘normal’ environment – which, for wolves, is the
wild.
When caught and kept in captivity for research purposes, wolves do
make aggressive challenges in order to maintain or heighten their status
within the group.

When living free, wolves, as Barry Eaton explains, live in relatively
peaceful and co-operative family units. Studies by Raymond and Linda
Coppinger have shown that wolves don’t even always ‘pack.’ It is a
survival strategy that they adopt when necessary – and, for domesticated
modern-day dogs, survival in the wild is not an issue.

To further dispel the misconceptions of dogs as pack animals, keen to
dominate us and become our leader, Coppinger and Coppinger also
conducted extensive studies of feral dogs, noting that even these do not
form set packs but, rather, are equally as happy to roam alone or with a
casual group of acquaintances, which may change frequently, evidencing a
far looser social structure and a willingness to ‘slot in’ to various
social situations without the need to assert authority.

Dominating Pet Dogs: Unnecessary?

Every dog owner will have heard or read, at some point in their dog-rearing careers, advice along the lines of ‘don’t let your dog eat before you’, ‘always walk through a doorway before your dog’, or ‘never allow your dog’s head to be at a level higher than your own.’

These ideas were all dreamed up during times when the first captive
wolf studies led to the widespread belief that dogs were out to assert
themselves as leaders and we must show them who’s really boss. In his
book, In Defence of Dogs, John Bradshaw counteracts this
outdated way of thinking, pointing out that dogs don’t appear to follow
any sort of hierarchy. He condemns any method of training which uses
positive punishments or aversives as a way of displaying ‘dominance’
over the family dog as potentially damaging to both the psychology of
the dog involved and the relationship between dog and owner.

Along with denouncing the idea of an integral desire in our pet dogs
to dominate us, Barry Eaton also points out the obvious – making your
dog wait until the family has finished eating, or forbidding it from
crossing a threshold before you pass is not only likely to make life
with a dog complicated, impractical, and confusing for all
concerned, but is also entirely unnecessary

The film offers an abbreviated history of the relationship between wolves and people—told from the wolf’s perspective—from a time when they coexisted to an era in which people began to fear and exterminate the wolves.

The return of wolves to the northern Rocky Mountains has been called one of America’s greatest conservation stories. But wolves are facing new attacks by members of Congress who are gunning to remove Endangered Species Act protections before the species has recovered.

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Inescapably, the realization was being borne in upon my preconditioned mind that the centuries-old and universally accepted human concept of wolf character was a palpable lie... From this hour onward, I would go open-minded into the lupine world and learn to see and know the wolves, not for what they were supposed to be, but for what they actually were.

-Farley Mowat, Never Cry Wolf

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“If you look into the eyes of a wild wolf, there is something there more powerful than many humans can accept.” – Suzanne Stone